Now, 33 years old, Amanda was born in Annapolis, Maryland where her father was stationed at the US Naval Academy. He was posted to the shared Spanish USA base at Rota near Cadiz when Amanda was seven. Her mother was born in Washington DC but continued to remain close to her Moroccan origins teaching her daughter Arabic and French. Amanda attended the local school and gained a place at Madrid University for a Media Studies course. Her room mate was Salome Mendosa who went on to become one of Spain’s most popular Flamenco dancers.
character profile
Phillip Armitage
Armitage by name, Army by nature. Phillip’s, note the two LLs, family motto originated from several successive generations serving her majesty in various conflict zones around the world when Rule Britannia was supposed to mean something. His parents, both covered in diesel oil, met over the broken guts of a tank engine in Paderhorn, The British Army base in Germany. He attended the local school and grew up speaking the two languages. Like the author, he was shipped off to a military boarding school at the tender age of eleven on the white cliffs of Dover, England, where he learned how to march, shoot, sail dinghies around in the harbor and the rudiments of academia. Like most cadets he went on to join the British Army and after basic training opted for the Intelligence Corps stationed near Bedford. He served two tours in Afghanistan.
Detective Inspector Leon Prado
In Spanish, Prado translates as meadow. A green and fertile place where nature thrives. It also serves as a surname. I had the pleasure to work with a property developer called Pepe Prado. Pepe was a distinguished character, a true caballero through and through. Unusually, his parents had shipped him off to Germany to study construction engineering and learn another language. On his return, he joined Bau Hoffman, a large German building company converting the dying sugar cane fields along the Torrox coast into what is today Torrox-Costa. When they overtraded and went bust, Pepe took them over from the bank and later developed Torrox Park. Appropriately, a lush green space with luxury properties on what would otherwise be scrubland. It was only logical for Leon Prado to have similar personality traits. His first name is Leon because I liked the synergy and music of the combination.